An acoustic echo canceler is one of the most desirable capabilities in a hands free telephone environment. The acoustic echo canceler prevents a speaker from hearing one's own voice during a phone conversation. The speech signal of a far-end speaker travels through a communication channel, a loud speaker, ambient air, a microphone, and through the communication channel back to the far-end speaker. In such a situation the far-end speaker can hear one's own voice returned with some delay, causing a distraction during phone conversations. The acoustic echo canceler cancels the far-end speech signal before the telephone system sends out the signal to the far-end speaker. Therefore, the purpose of the acoustic echo canceler is to cancel the far-end speech so that the far-end speech does not travel back to the far-end speaker. However, the acoustic echo canceler should not cancel or distort the near-end talker's speech when it exists. The near-end speech detection logic circuit is one of the critical components of the acoustic echo canceler. Conventional acoustic echo cancelers use near-end speech detection circuits that do not operate well in low signal to noise ratio environments, such as car phone applications during vehicle operation. Therefore, it is desirable to have an acoustic echo canceler with near-end speech detection that performs well in low signal to noise ratio environments.